


And laugh at gilded butterflies

by ireallydidthistomyself



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 13, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, M/M, Ma'lak Box (Supernatural), and all along the watchtower hadn't happened, but like lightly implied, implied rowena/sam - Freeform, lightly implied dean/crowley too, like an intensely sad character study and then like very light domestic stuff, sort of if cas had lived
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:27:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28326075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ireallydidthistomyself/pseuds/ireallydidthistomyself
Summary: "I’m gonna find you Cas, don’t worry. Wherever you are, whatever they’ve done to you, to either of you, it doesn’t matter, I’ll be there soon. I promise, I promise- even if I have to tear heaven apart myself, I don’t care. I’ll do it."Lucifer never found him and Jack's birth went smoothly and secretly. Cas raised him quietly, carefully, and alone, up in Washington, before the angels found them.
Relationships: Castiel & Jack Kline, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 25
Kudos: 292





	And laugh at gilded butterflies

**Author's Note:**

> written out of an idea i had yesterday like in the space between waking and sleeping, hope you all like it
> 
> title from one of my favorite lines from king lear:
> 
> "We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage./When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down/And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,/And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh/At gilded butterflies"

When the angels came for them Cas wasn’t ready. He had warded the house, of course, but not enough, and he hadn’t half the powers he used to. Most of his time had been consumed with caring for Jack who got bigger everyday (he’d woken up one morning and found him aged from eleven to sixteen, those sort of things were commonplace in the months since his birth and by the time they came he looked nearly an adult). And even though Jack’s body seemed to be aging, his mind was essentially at the same rate. The aging he had asked him to stop but the boy had admitted it was involuntary. Cas had sighed and given in. There had been so much to teach him, that had been all he could think of then.

Their days were consumed with Cas showing Jack around their garden and the forest near their house, naming every plant, every insect, every bird, every small animal. It was the two of them struggling through cookbooks, both comically inept at it. It was reading Jack books and watching movies, the ones Dean had showed him as “essential to being human,” and then shutting those movies off halfway when he realized how startlingly inappropriate so many were. It was feeding the cat that Jack had named Scooby for his favorite cartoon (not fully understanding that it was a dog’s name) and making sure Jack didn’t hold him too tightly whenever he picked him up for a hug. It was teaching Jack to fly or levitate books or drive his truck. It was sitting by the shore and pointing out the sealife and their ancestors and history and whispering that he knew a man who loved fishing and would one day, if things got better, teach Jack how to himself. 

When they finally arrived, Jack had been terrified as he’d never seen a face besides his father’s, not since being born at least. Cas had taken such care to hide him in his few months of life, not even allowing him into town with him. _You’re too special_ , he had told him, _people will try to hurt you_. Even good people, he had thought, considering Dean and Sam and their promise to take Jack’s grace. Lucifer would do anything to get his hands on his son. For all Cas knew the British Men of Letters were even still out there, hunting them. There wasn’t a single group that wouldn’t do him harm. Jack grew curious sometimes, battered him with requests to go with him into town, but mostly he was content. He was still young enough to see his father as the most interesting and spectacular creature on earth, and while he asked questions about his mother or the people Cas had known before he was born, he never disobeyed.

Clearly, the warnings had worked too well. Jack had seen the strangers and froze so immediately that they had been able to get the enochian cuffs on him and had him fully subdued by the time they came for Cas who was in the house making breakfast. He had fought hard himself, seasoned soldier as he had been, but he was no match for all of them, and eventually he too was overpowered and restrained.

Naomi came forward with the Ma’lak box and presented Jack’s fate as somewhere between a mercy and a necessary evil. Cas, for his part, finally fully hated his own father. The idea of locking your child up, alone and afraid, in the dark for all eternity, innocent as Jack was or guilty as Lucifer had been, was abominable. He suddenly realized how unforgivable it had been of his father to willingly do such a thing to his own son. He struggled harder than he had thought he ever had in his life as Jack seemed to simply grow pale and frightened. Cas wondered just how much of his young brain could even understand this, what did eternity mean to him? A few seconds alone in the dark would be hell enough to someone who’d lived so little life. He wouldn’t be able to even touch the true horror of forever.

“Please,” had been all Jack had been able to quietly get out, shaking lips, innocent eyes, a creature so good and so harmless that the injustice of it all crashed hard into Cas once again. The angels, however, didn’t seem to see it that way, and simply pushed the shaking body into the box laid before him. When confronted with that, as they began to drag him towards the sea and Cas away back towards the house, only then did Jack begin to cry. “No! Dad! Dad, please! Don’t let them!” 

If I can’t save him now, I’ll kill myself, Cas thought, and in light of that, knew what he must do. He put out one quiet prayer of _I’m so sorry, don’t forget us_ , to a man who couldn’t hear it, and then turned to Naomi.

“Let me go with him,” Cas said, his voice firm but terrified. Naomi turned to him. “Please, if you won’t let him go free, at least don’t make him be alone.”

“You would choose this, Castiel?” She asked him. “Damn yourself for an eternity like this?”

Cas nodded. 

“He shouldn’t be alone, I can-“ Cas choked on his words, remembering all the old promises he’d made to Kelly and all the new promises he’d made to the tiny babe he’d cradled in his arms so short a time ago. “I can soothe him. He won’t be so afraid. It’s all I ask. You’d have to kill me anyway, I would never stop trying to find him, why not grant me this, if it’s all the same?”

“It could be a trick,” Duma said to Naomi but she shook her head. She turned to him with harsh grey eyes.

“You understand what you’re asking right? There will be no reprieve, no end. We have no plans to rescue either of you. No one will, no one can. It will be hell, endless dark, a living death,” Naomi told him and he just wished she’d shut up as his choice had been made. All it was doing was scaring Jack.

“I understand, let me go to him, I’m begging you,” he told her, fierce, unrepentant, and uncowed. She waved her hands at the angels holding him and they led him towards the box. Jack for his part, was sobbing, unable to get a word out. With all the grace he could muster, Cas stepped into the box and laid down beside his son, quickly wrapping him in his arms and kissing his temple. He looked up at Naomi one last time. “Thank you,” he said. She nodded.

“I had hoped it wouldn’t end like this with you, Castiel,” she said sadly. “All the energy we put into fixing you- I thought I could save you.” 

Cas had no response to that, and simply turned into the shaking child beside him, burying his face in his hair as the coffin’s lid was shut on top of them both. The locks clicked one after the other, Jack flinching at each one, and once they were done, the cuffs restraining Jack’s hands fell away, no need for them anymore. Cas felt them being dragged down the beach towards the sea. Jack tensed up and wrapped his arms around his father’s neck. Cas held him close.

“Don’t worry,” he told him. “Don’t cry, it’s going to be alright. We have each other, understand? I’ll care for you and you for me. I’ll tell you every story I know and no one will ever hurt us, okay? It’s going to be just fine, Jack. I promise. Don’t be afraid. The world- the world is bad and frightening but in here we’ll be safe. And we’ll outlive them all. You and me, we’ll make each other happy, I promise we will.”

He wasn’t lying, he told himself that, though Jack did not seem to believe him. Instead he simply clung to him tighter as they suddenly felt themselves adrift, the rush of water over them. The angels had sealed the coffin well, though. The water wouldn’t get in. “We’re safe,” he kept whispering to the boy in his arms, “I have you.”

* * *

Jack slept a lot of the time, more than he ever had before. It was the only escape. Cas couldn’t sleep himself, but instead would join his son in his dreams, his angelic abilities still able to do a task that simple. They were strange and unformed, made of movies and television and their old house. Sometimes that made him want to weep, Jack had lived such a short time, there was next to nothing for him to dream of. Cas didn’t weep though, not ever. Jack would always see it and he couldn’t have that. Instead, he would manipulate the dreams, a gentle touch here or there to infuse them with Cas’s own memories, create a more detailed reality, or a more pleasant dream. Jack never had nightmares, he made sure of that. 

When he was awake he answered any question Jack asked him, and he had many. Cas had never been so grateful for his thousands of years of memories. There was an endless stream of entertainment for Jack, and in some ways that was the biggest hurdle to get over, staving off boredom in an endless nothingness. Their first few days (or weeks or whatever, Cas didn’t know, couldn’t keep anything resembling time and there was no point to it anyway) had led to Jack cringing and gasping anytime a strange noise was heard or their prison was jolted. And he would panic sometimes too, bang on the walls until his hands bled and Cas had to hold him back and rock him as best he could, keeping him calm and reminding him he was loved and that they would survive this somehow. But the fear had faded after a point.

There was ultimately nothing to fear as the eternity sank in for them both, and while there were intense bouts of anger and restlessness, Jack had mostly been a restful and happy child, and that carried over. There, Cas found, was the mercy of his young age, he was already accepting this as his reality, and he knew that in a few years he would forget to have known anything different. It was like watching the allegory of the cave in real time. The routine of the nights dreaming of a world he would never see again, and the waking hours in the dark, lit only by their grace, as his father patiently told him of the world, had already sunk in and been accepted by the little boy. Cas, for his own part, knew he would never be able to accept it. He was too old, and he had tasted of a life and love too wonderful to ever forget it. 

He was saving those memories, though, for later. It took incredible self control, as they were the ones he wanted to savor the most. But he knew that their later spanned on forever and while his reserves were nearly endless, he didn’t want to spend centuries with nothing new to tell Jack but detailed descriptions of how the monkeys crawled out of the trees or the first tornado. These things were beautiful, sure, but not anything like the last ten years of his life. Those had been the years that had counted. 

It wasn’t really forever, he knew that. For better or worse the world would one day end and they would both be free. Where they would go after that he was unsure, Jack had a soul so presumably he would go to heaven, if such a thing would still exist at the end of the world. As for himself, he had no idea. That was all that truly pained him about death, the fact of an eternal separation from Jack, though he knew it would be a good thing and his son would finally be at peace.

The cruelest part of their fate, he considered, was that Jack could kill him but he couldn’t kill Jack. Jack didn’t know he would be able to, and Cas would never tell him, no matter how endless his suffering became, but he was sure that his son would be able to smite him if he really wanted to. And what Cas wouldn’t give to do the same to Jack, he couldn’t put into words. He daydreamed about it sometimes, how he would wait until Jack was asleep and then send him quietly off to heaven before he woke up. Of course, if killing Jack had been in his powers, they would never have been in this situation in the first place. Maybe the end of the world wouldn’t even kill him and he would be floating in the nothingness long after the sun burned out. That thought terrified Cas more than he could handle.

The stories Jack mostly asked for were of his mother, and Cas was happy to oblige. Kelly had told him so much of her life, written a lot down that Jack would never get to read, but Cas, thankfully, had already memorized it all. Cas wondered if Kelly thought he had failed her, for allowing this to happen to Jack. As much as he hated himself for being too weak to prevent this, he knew she wouldn’t be angry. He had kept his promise. Jack was as safe as could be, he was good, and Cas was caring for him. He had given him everything, absolutely everything, that had to count for something.

“I was just thinking,” Jack said to him one day, voice tentative and echoing against the metal of their prison. “The man- your friend- the fisherman?” 

“Dean,” Cas told him, as if he hadn’t told Jack that name one thousand times since he was born. “His name is Dean.”

“Yes, Dean,” Jack replied. “If he, well, he’s a fisherman, and you said he cared about you, and would care about us, so I thought- maybe…” 

“What, Jack?” 

“Maybe, he might- you’re going to say it’s stupid-” Jack cut himself off, Cas shook his head.

“Nothing you say is stupid,” Cas told him patiently. He could just make out Jack’s small smile in the darkness.

“Well, I thought, what if one day, because he fishes, he might find us one day? Pull us out?” Jack asked and Cas’s heart fell. “I mean who knows, right?” 

Cas shook his head and took Jack’s face in his hands.

“Jack. You need to listen to me and you need to understand this: no one is coming,” Cas told him, his voice hard and steady and he watched the disappointment fill the boy’s eyes. He hated to hurt him like this but it was a necessary evil. No point in him having hope for it to be crushed every morning. “We’re deep in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There’s no way for us to be saved and the box is warded, and no one knows where to look. This is what we have, this box and each other. You have to accept that, alright?”

“But maybe-”

“There is no maybe, I wish there was but there isn’t. This is it. We have to be thankful for this, alright?” Cas stroked hair from Jack’s face as he spoke. Jack didn’t answer him. “Alright?’

“Alright,” he replied, defeated and soft. Cas sighed.

“I can tell you something though,” Cas said and Jack looked up at him. “Just because we’re here doesn’t mean we’ve been forgotten.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked.

“Dean, my friend, the fisherman, he prays to me. I can hear him. And while he doesn’t know where we are, he does miss us, even you, who he’s never met. So even though we’re alone here, we aren't- we’re still loved. And that matters,” he told him. And it was true, not a white lie for Jack’s sake. Dean prayed to him all the time, nearly every night like back in purgatory. Soft words like _hey Cas, how are you? Wish you would check in. How’s the baby? Must be getting big. You know, even if- even if you’re not gonna get rid of its grace, I still wanna meet him- if it means seeing you again, I’ll do it._ Dean’s prayers grew desperate sometimes too like _where are you? Why can’t we find a trace of you anywhere? You know I’m not mad you know I still- you’re still family. We all miss you, Sammy, Claire, mom, even Crowley, we all need you back here, man. So why won’t you answer me huh? Can’t fucking pick up a phone? Are you scared of me?_

The worst prayers were the ones where Dean said the things he couldn’t say to him in life, prayers like _I can’t do this without you_ and _everywhere I look I see you_ and _do you still listen to the mixtape? I hope you think of me every time you dumb bastard_ and most painfully: _you know how I feel about you, do you not feel the same?_ Those were the moments when it took every bit of the unfeeling angel in Cas not to cry.

He had known, of course, how Dean felt. He had known when he had told him that he’d rather have him, cursed or not, and from all his prayers in purgatory. He had doubted it so little he would have let him kill him on the floor of the bunker and couldn’t hate him when he had thrown him out. Dean didn’t have to say it, it was there every time he had rubbed his back or touched his face or drifted over his hand or made him food that he didn’t even need to eat. It was there in how more and more in his prayers Dean was talking about Jack like he was their baby and not some abstract little creature foisted on them.

They’d never spoken of these feelings, but they were facts between them. There had been two nights: once when he worked at the Gas n Sip after defeating Ephraim, slow and quiet and sad in Dean’s motel room, and once, desperate and furious in the bunker in the middle of the night after he was nearly killed by Ramiel. Both times had been cloaked in shame and done without a word before and after, the first time Dean had been up and dressed and silent by the time he woke up. The second time, he himself had been gone before Dean awoke. He couldn’t help but notice the sad fact that such things only happened whenever Dean was confronted with the reality of losing him. They couldn’t make love when things were peaceful and easy.

He understood the terms of the agreement, and trapped in a box with only his child and Dean’s prayers for company wasn’t so different from the reality of their love beforehand. They were to never speak of these things, never to kiss or caress. They could never have a life together, Dean would not have allowed that. The plan was to suffer in silence and live beside one another and think that to be enough. It wasn’t enough, it had never been enough, but Cas would take what he could get.

“I wish we could answer him,” Jack said quietly, breaking Cas out of his thoughts. Cas smiled at him.

“I know, but we have to make do with what we have,” he replied and Jack nodded. He was quiet for a long while and Cas slowly but surely felt the boy fall asleep, his chest rising and falling, nestled against his father. 

When Cas entered Jack’s dreams that night he saw a man, face hazy from only existing out of a few faded photographs they’d kept in the house in Washington, fishing by a lakeside and catching a huge fish. When he cut open its stomach, Jack was lying asleep inside of it and the man picked him up, and cleaned him off, and carried him into the house. Cas smiled fondly and sharpened the details on his face and watched him put Jack to bed and feed him soup and ask him who he was as Jack excitedly told him his life story. It was such a shame, Cas thought, when he finally woke up and the dream faded from view.

* * *

They finally discovered the place Cas had rented, up in North Cove, Washington. Crowley had laughed about what sort of idiot would go under the name James Novak, the easiest perhaps to trace, but Dean had shot him the dirtiest of looks and he had shut up. Dean muttered to himself that it was probably good enough, had taken them over a year to find. A year during which his mom had left them for good to go up to Canada and help out the Banes twins, texting them only occasionally, everyone admitting it was probably for the best; a year in which they had also managed to fully cage Lucifer, defeat the British Men of Letters, and those should have been big wins, incredible wins. But it had been hollow, absolutely hollow, without Cas. It had been a year of him worrying night and day and brushing off Sam and his mom’s concerns. A year of wanting to kill Crowley every time he made some wry joke about the angel and of calling in any favor he could think of just to get the slightest of a lead, it had been one of the worst years of his life.

The house was undisturbed, Cas having paid up the rent long enough that no one had been by to check, and in the exact condition it had been left. What he saw made him want to lose his stomach or break or a window or throttle someone, anyone. The door was broken down, Cas’s ugly truck rusting in the front yard. Furniture was knocked over, blood staining the kitchen counter where someone’s head had evidently hit it, signs of struggle, he noted in his head. Food was left out though devoured by now, the place swarming with flies and mold and he noticed Sam gagging and hiding his nose in his t-shirt. 

“Well, I think we missed them,” Crowley remarked glibly and Dean glared at him once again.

“You shut up,” he barked and Crowley had rolled his eyes. 

Dean wandered through the house feeling like a lost child, trying to piece together the story, the life that had been here and lost- no not lost, moved or captured- but Christ not lost. There were two small empty bowls of food on the floor for an animal, he presumed a cat, remembering years ago when Cas had asked him for one. He expected it was long gone by then. There were books on nearly every subject open seemingly everywhere and childish drawings in crayon on the fridge and tables. A line of shoes were by the door with coats hanging above them. One was a trench coat that smelled musty and dirty and made him want to weep hanging right beside a yellow raincoat. He touched the raincoat gently, unable to go near the trench coat at least with people watching.

“Why’s it so big?” Sam said, breaking the silence, and Dean turned to stare at him.

“What do you mean?” Dean asked..

“Well, it’s too small to be Cas’s, but the nephilim, I mean no way he’s old enough to be wearing a coat that size. It doesn’t make sense,” Sam said. 

“Maybe he aged himself,” Crowley replied, “I mean, there’s not a lot of lore about nephilim but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Like Amara,” Sam replied, and Crowley nodded. Something in Dean clenched.

“He’s nothing like Amara,” Dean spat through gritted teeth.

“Don’t get defensive baby daddy,” Crowley joked and Dean spun on him, banging the small man into a wall. Crowley grinned at him.

“Cut the crap,” he said. 

“I thought we had gotten past this phase, Squirrel, not that I’m not thrilled to see a renaissance,” Crowley said and Dean let him go abruptly. He looked away.

“Start looking for clues on what happened. Or I don’t know why you’re here at all.”

“I’ll call Rowena,” Sam supplied. Dean nodded and made his way up the stairs.

There wasn’t much up there, Cas’s bedroom, as he presumed it was, was left pretty bare. He went through the drawers desperately for any sort of clue, but found only soft sweaters and striped shirts of the kind he had worn back when he had been human. The blue tie was hanging off his dresser and Dean ran over the silky fabric with his hands. He had an urge to press it to his lips, but instead stuffed into his pocket, taking no care to not crumple it up. There was little sign of any personhood at all, besides the windows with the ruined bloody warding (for all the good they did) and a small photograph tucked into the mirror. It was one they had taken a few years ago of the two of them leaning against the Impala, Dean’s hand over Cas’s shoulder, the both of them laughing. Sam had taken it, if he remembered right. He didn’t remember why. Dean didn’t know Cas had kept a copy. He pocketed it too.

The baby’s room was beside it. This one was more clearly lived in. There was a mural painted on that wall, “Jack” written in apples on a tree with a rainbow above it containing the alphabet. _Jack_ , Dean thought, _so that’s what they named him?_ He could finally stop just calling him “the baby” in his head, or “the nephilim'' when he talked to Sam. There was no crib, but instead a mattress leaning against the wall, sheets with shooting stars on them, and a collection of stuffed animals in the bed. The dresser was full of clothes of varying ages it seemed, making him think the Amara theory was probably right. A laptop was plugged into the corner. It was a life, Dean thought, a whole life had taken place here and he had missed it. Cas and this kid, Kelly’s kid, Lucifer’s kid, as he had to keep reminding himself when he thought too softly about the child. They’d had something more normal than he had ever dreamed of giving him. And what did it cost them? He couldn’t bear it.

Crowley appeared in the doorway. Dean turned to him.

“We have their last location, we have a room probably covered in their DNA, we have a lead,” Crowley said and Dean was shocked by the almost gentleness to his voice. “My mother, if she’s good at anything, she can do a damn good tracking spell. I’ve got any demons still loyal to me putting out the widest APB you can think of. We are pulling all the punches, Dean. We’ll get them back.”

Dean looked away. If the demon thought he needed comforting, and was willing to provide it, he was really in deep shit.

“ _Get them back,_ I never had them in the first place,” Dean said under his breath.

“What did you say?” Crowley asked.

“Nothing,” Dean said. “Nothing, just get on it.”

Crowley looked at him like he wanted to say more, do more, he lingered in the doorway for a moment and then skulked out. Dean wound up his fist to bash into the wall suddenly, old familiar rage replacing sorrow yet again. He stopped himself before he made impact, fist unclenching, chickening out at the last second. This was Cas’s house, he realized, this was Cas’s kid’s bedroom. He wasn’t gonna ruin it. If he could do anything for him, anything at all, it was that. He’d fucked up enough already.

* * *

One morning (morning was a loose term, Cas wasn’t exactly ever sure what time it was or how the days were passing, all sort of just measured by when Jack was asleep or awake) Jack woke up crying. It wasn’t exactly an uncommon occurrence but it hadn’t come out of any sort of a nightmare or conversation, it had just happened. Cas began shushing him, smoothing his hair.

“What’s the matter? Hey, what’s wrong?” He asked and Jack could barely speak, he was sobbing so hard. Eventually, he was able to get him to breathe and he stared at him, forcing his blue eyes to focus. 

“This is all my fault,” Jack got out, “I never realized- I never- you’re here because of me.”

Cas felt his heart break a little.

“Jack, I chose this,” he said. “I chose this you, know that. There’s no life for me without you and the idea of you alone in the dark? I couldn’t bear it. You know that, I’ve told you, this was my choice.”

He thought they’d gotten over this, he’d explained it to Jack so many times since they’d first been imprisoned here. He had made it clear how lucky he was that the angels had let them be together, how happy Cas was to have him and care for him. He thought Jack had been able to believe it, or at least had passed the phase of crying over it. However, Jack shook his head aggressively at Cas’s words.

“No, not that, I don’t mean that. I mean, in the motel room,” Jack told him, struggling to breathe enough to speak. “When you put your hand on my mom’s stomach, and I told her that you were my father and then I showed you the vision in the playground- it couldn’t have been true whatever I showed you, because we’re here forever right? So, I led you here, I must have. Because I knew this was coming and I was scared so I made you come. You wouldn’t have done any of this, you’d have killed us like you were supposed to. And then everything would be okay. You wouldn't be stuck here forever. And it's forever dad! I mean it's really- like you always say. Just this forever! You would be home with- with the Winchesters and it would all be okay.”

“No,” Cas said sharply, cutting off his son’s babbling despair. “No, that isn’t true.”

“How is it not true?” Jack shouted. “I’m not a baby! Don’t lie to me!”

It didn’t help that Jack truly _was_ such a baby, that when Cas looked at his soul it was so shockingly young, just a little slip of a thing, and by virtue of that he was innocent. Children never believe you when you say things like that. It had never helped him with Claire either, in his well meaning but shoddy attempts to parent her. He heard her prayers once in a while too, simple little things on hunts and before bed. He had never been more grateful for Jody Mills in his whole life.

He took his son’s hand in his own and traced circles into the knuckles.

“First of all, you need to know how lost I was before I met you. I was just, desperately lost and hopeless. I didn’t think I mattered to anyone in the world, that my life was expendable and pointless, that I had made only a string of mistakes,” _that you, that saying yes to Lucifer and accidentally allowing him to make you, had been a mistake,_ he thought, but did not say. “I was so hopeless I was going to do an unforgivable thing,” he added, and the image of the Colt being pointed to Kelly Kline’s head, the way her frightened but trusting eyes had gazed back at him, inadvertently entered his mind. Even after all he had done for her, he was still so disgusted with the man he had been then, so desperate to prove his worth that he would kill an innocent. “I wouldn’t have lasted long, not the way I was. You- you gave me purpose for the first time in years, reminded me of the hopes and dreams, the faith I had once had.”

“But then why-”

“I’m not finished Jack,” he said sternly. “Because it’s more than just that. The other part of it is, I think- I believe I was always supposed to be your father. I know I didn’t make you, I know that. But it was my decisions that led to it anyway- and as soon as I felt you kick, before you showed me those visions or anything, that was when I knew. I felt such joy, joy I couldn’t imagine I was capable of feeling, something small and expectant in my chest. And I don’t know who I would be without that joy, I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter that it’s ended up like this, I would never have done a thing different. The time we spent in Washington, before, that was some of the happiest of my life. You didn’t lead me astray you led me exactly where I wanted to be.”

Jack’s face screwed up with thought for a few moments, as if he was trying to understand what Cas was telling him. Then finally he gave a small nod and leaned his back against the floor of the coffin. Cas couldn’t tell if he believed him or not and he watched the little boy lose himself in thoughts for a few moments before turning back to him, as if a wave of contentment had washed over him. It was sometimes funny, to Cas, how Jack would shake things off.

“Can you tell me more about the Star Wars movie?” Jack asked and Cas smiled and launched into where he’d left off in the plot, going through the images one by one as Metatron had implanted in his head and Dean had made him rewatch last fall. He didn’t know if he was doing any of it justice, but Jack seemed to love it.

It was later in that day, in a moment of quiet, that he heard Dean’s voice praying in his head once again. 

_Hey, Cas, it’s me,_ he began, like usual, _so we found the house. ‘James Novak,’ you are a bit of an idiot, don’t know how it took us so long to find you. Guess we’re idiots too. Anyway, it’s a nice place, that you have, had, whatever. I wish I could’ve seen it under better circumstances…_ Dean seemed to trail off for a moment, as if he was searching for the right thing to say. _Jack, huh? That’s what you named him? It’s a good name. And, he’s not really a baby anymore is he? I wish you’d left some photos around, man. I’d really like to see him._ Cas found himself harshly intaking a breath that he didn't need, hoping Jack didn’t notice. _Cas, what happened? We found blood, Crowley thinks it was angels, no scorch marks so I’m assuming- I know you can’t be-_ Dean cut off. _Why didn't you call us? Shit, I’d have been there as soon as I could. I would have done anything. I’d have saved you, how could you think I wouldn’t?_ And Cas wanted to say, desperately, lovingly, that he’d have called if he’d known, that he had never doubted him, that it had simply all been too fast and now it was all too late. _We’re gonna- I’m gonna find you Cas, don’t worry. Wherever you are, whatever they’ve done to you, to either of you, it doesn’t matter, I’ll be there soon. I promise, I promise- even if I have to tear heaven apart myself, I don’t care. I’ll do it. I’m never gonna rest. I won’t fail you, not this time. I promise. Amen._

Cas could almost feel Dean exhale, could see his bowed head and closed eyes opening again, the way he would shake himself off and go back to helping Sam or whoever. It was all so familiar. He resisted an urge to wrap an arm around Jack and pull him close, just to have something to hold onto. He couldn’t tell him, wouldn’t give him false hope. Even if Cas couldn’t help but feel a little hope himself. Dean Winchester had never, not once, in the time they’d known each other, been able to rescue him, but he didn’t break his promises either. 

_He knows his name,_ a voice inside of him cried out distantly. That was some sort of hope, he thought. No matter what happened, Dean knew Jack’s name. He knew they were out there and missing him and most of all he knew that they were not far from him by choice, they didn’t hate him. That was something, he told himself, that had to be something. 

* * *

Crowley’s promise had seemed sort of bullshit as Rowena hadn’t been able to get a read on their location with her strongest tracking spell yet. Crowley’s demons were getting nothing back, no trace anywhere. He wished they had anything resembling angel contacts, but of course, it had been Cas who had been able to pull those sorts of things. Sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking and dream of storming heaven all by himself, if it wasn’t an automatic suicide mission he’d have done it. He’d have killed them all, made the angels fall all over again, if it would save Cas and Jack. The need was deep in his belly, that same familiar unquenchable fire. If he couldn't save them, he kept thinking, what did it all matter? Cas had given everything for him and he couldn’t save him just once, couldn’t save his kid.

Rowena had come to them with a new idea for a spell, one that would be stronger, might bypass warding, but would require a trifecta of witches. Power of three, she said, in her lilting Scottish accent, never discount it. Of course the challenge was finding two other willing witches, as Rowena was not exactly the most popular of the bunch.

“Well, Samuel will certainly do quite nicely,” she said with a small, hungry grin and in normal times Dean would have laughed at his little brothers blushing face but he felt too frozen over to feel a thing. 

“I’m not a witch!” Sam protested but she laughed and touched his chin as Crowley rolled his eyes.

“Of course not, darling, but you’re as close as we’ve got, and who knows, we could make one out of you yet,” she cooed as she ran her long, painted fingers across his stubble. Sam caught her wrist with his hand. She raised an eyebrow.

“That’s only two witches, Rowena,” he said. “You told us we needed three.”

“Ach, well, I was hoping between the three of you you must know of one,” she asked, turning to the group, with slightly accusing eyes.

“None that would help,” Crowley answered with a shrug. He was being helpful, Dean had to admit, uncharacteristically helpful, but never without gritted teeth. 

“Max Banes,” Dean blurted out. 

“Tasha Banes’s boy?” Rowena asked. Dean nodded.

“Our mom, she’s helping them hunt up in Canada, him and his sister Alicia,” Sam added.

“Are they both witches?” Rowena asked. Sam shook his head.

“Just Max,” Sam replied. Rowena nodded and smiled.

“Well, if he’s anything like his mother he’ll do nicely,” Rowena told them. “We’ll have your angel and the wee nephilim back before you know it.”

“You know, everyone’s been saying that but it still hasn’t _come_ to anything,” Dean barked.

“Alright, Liam Neeson,” Crowley drawled. “We’re doing all we bloody can.”

“Well it’s not enough is it!” Dean shouted at Crowley who for his part seemed unfazed. Sam sighed.

“I’m gonna call mom,” he said awkwardly. Dean nodded.

“Do that.”

* * *

Dean hadn’t told his mother about any of this, there hadn’t seemed much of a point. He didn’t think she would help. She had her own life up with the Banes, serving as sort of the Bobby to their operation if his memory served him. They weren’t on bad terms, sure, but they also couldn’t stay too close, not without biting each other’s heads off. She had made it clear she didn’t exist to clean up his messes and that being with him was painful for them both. She had been this perfect mother in his head and he had been her sweet little boy. They both fell rather woefully short of those expectations.

Still, it was good to see her with the Banes when they showed up, though he had to admit Max and Alicia’s hugs were warmer than Mary’s was. Alicia used some lovely fruity shampoo that filled his nose when she wrapped him up in her arms upon entering the doorway, and Max gave him a tight squeeze, reminding him of the kinship they had found when they’d worked the hunt together. They hadn’t spoken about the deal Max had made to save Alicia, but he knew he understood the younger man better than either could put into words. He wanted to talk to Max about this all, about why he felt like he was dying all the time and why he was worrying in a way he’d only ever worried about Sam. But he knew he’d never get a chance with all the work to be done.

He certainly couldn’t talk to his mother about it.

Dean wanted the ritual to start right away, but Rowena insisted they all needed their beauty sleep and Sam wanted to catch up with Mary. It left him with another night to sit in the kitchen and drink himself into oblivion. In the wee hours of the night, or maybe even morning, Crowley entered quietly and sat beside him.

“Mind if I join you?” Crowley asked. Dean gave him a grunt that he clearly took as a yes and sat down beside him, pouring himself a glass of scotch. “It’s piss what you people drink.”

“Well, it’s a free drink so shut up or get out,” Dean grumbled and Crowley laughed dryly. 

“You know this was all feathers’s fault, right?” Crowley asked suddenly and Dean’s head turned towards him abruptly. "Everything that's happened, he brought it on himself."

“You want me to stab you in the throat?” Dean asked him, taking another swig. 

“I think if that was gonna happen you’re almost a decade too late, darling,” Crowley joked. “Can’t we just admit we’re friends?”

“We aren’t,” Dean said firmly.

“Well, what are we?” Crowley asked and Dean looked at him. What was Crowley? A missed opportunity, a dumb vindictive mistake, the only person who was ever honest with him, and ultimately a poor replacement for the one person he thought of before he went to be and right before he woke up, that was what Crowley was. Somehow he didn’t need to say any of this and Crowley only sighed as if in understanding. “No, I’m the blasted idiot who never had a chance. You took it didn’t you?”

“Took what?”

“The coat, it was gone when we left the house,” Crowley told him. Dean didn't respond. He had, of course he had, just like before at the reservoir. It had been perfunctory, shameful and quick, and stuffed in the trunk of the car again. More than perfunctory, when he really thought about it, it had been natural. He couldn’t leave it, that would be breaking some sort of vow he couldn’t recall making. “Of course.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dean told him. He wanted to be drunker for this conversation. Crowley stood up and walked towards the kitchen door.

“Of course you don’t, sweetheart,” Crowley told him, and headed off into the hallway.

* * *

Dean was hung over the next morning when they did the spell, and just watching his brother, Rowena, and Max chant made his headache. Alicia came up beside him, gentle hand on his shoulder. He wished people would stop trying to have heart to hearts with him, Sam seemed to do it anytime they went for a drive together. The only person he wanted to have one with was his mother and he was pretty damn sure she wasn’t going to be offering. She hadn’t even gotten out of bed yet. He looked at Alicia.

“Rough night?” She whispered. “You look pathetically hung over.” 

“This is just a normal Tuesday morning,” he replied and she laughed.

“Wanna hot box the bathroom?” She asked him, his eyes nearly flew out of his head. “I won’t tell your mom.”

“You serious?” He asked her and she gave a nod. 

“I mean, if you want, brought my stash and everything,” she said. “Max won’t be mad. He says weed doesn’t do anything for him with all his witch shit.”

“What is he strictly a magic mushrooms sorta guy?” Dean joked and she grinned. 

“Something like that,” she told him, and ran her tongue over her teeth. “What do you say?”

Dean didn’t get a chance to respond because it was then that the chanting stopped and Max turned to them both with an expectant look in his hazel eyes.

“We found them!” He said and Dean had to stop himself from running the distance across the room towards the two witches and his brother. 

“Where? What do you mean?” Dean asked and Sam looked at him, his face drawn.

“It- it doesn’t make sense,” he said quietly and Dean felt his heart race.

“What do you mean?” He asked again, Rowena went over to him, her wide legged pants swishing along with her.

“They’re- they’re at the bottom of the ocean. The Pacific ocean,” Rowena told him, voice gentler than he’d ever heard her affect it. “Someone must have, it’s powerful magic, old magic.”

“A ma’lak box,” Max explained. “It’s a prison to hold angels.”

“It’s a coffin,” Sam added. 

“They locked them in a coffin and dumped them in the ocean?” Dean asked and no one replied. He looked at Crowley who was sitting in the far corner of the room. The demon quirked an eyebrow in his direction. Cas and Jack were trapped, in a box at the bottom of the ocean. The concept was so ludicrous he was caught between wanting to laugh and wanting to shoot himself in the head. Then again, most of his life made him feel that way. 

Everyone seemed to be standing around, waiting to see what he would do next. He met Crowley’s eyes briefly. 

“Well, let’s charter a fucking boat.”

* * *

Jack was somewhere between waking and sleeping and Cas barely noticed what was happening until they broke the water. He hadn’t considered it as anything more than a particularly rough storm, something not so uncommon, pushing them about and even occasionally above the water. No, it wasn’t until they were being hoisted into the air that he realized something was truly going on. He couldn’t wake Jack though, afraid of giving him any sort of false hope until he was absolutely certain. Instead, he held him closer and felt the boy begin to slowly awake on his own, rubbing his eyes and looking at him questioningly, the unreality of it all not having sunk in to either of them.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked and Cas shook his head.

“I don’t know,” he told him. “Whatever it is, it’ll be alright,” he said firmly and Jack buried his head into the crook of his father’s neck. It was an oft repeated gesture, whenever the truth of their fate got too much for him, he could sink into Cas and let the world disappear. It was a place of safety, a promise to always protect him that somehow Jack still believed in, not realizing just how horribly and irrevocably he had broken it. Cas was more than happy to indulge that fantasy, probably needed it as much as Jack.

Their bones roughly and abruptly hit the metal sides of the box as they were dropped down from where they had been hoisted. Jack clung to him tighter. Cas thought he heard familiar voices but couldn’t be sure. There was something calling out to him at the edge of his consciousness, something between elation and despair. He didn’t know. His grace had been failing more and more with each passing day. 

The lid was wrenched open and sunlight suddenly and harshly filled their world. Cas blinked hard, his eyes burning and Jack couldn’t even open his own. _Was that the sky_ , he wondered, _or was this all a dream?_ He wanted to tell Jack to fly, right away, go now, before they had a chance to slam the lid again, but he was too shellshocked, too overwhelmed to move a muscle. It had been ages of nothingness and suddenly everything. He felt like he couldn’t breathe. It had to be a dream. It was then that he saw the ever familiar face, the soft green eyes and the calloused hands leaning over and into the coffin and he heard the voice call his name, then Jack’s. _Oh_ , he thought, _this_ is _a dream._

“Cas, it’s me, it’s me, look at me- I’ve got you, we have you- you’re safe-” Dean was saying over and over and Cas was shaking his head.

“It can’t be, it can’t be,” he said, and Jack was then beginning to look up in amazement.

“Dad…” he said, voice soft and rough, accosted with so many faces and the sun and the smell of fresh air. He had never dreamed of his boy getting these things again. It couldn’t be real, it couldn’t be. It was a trick, some cruel trick.

“They said it was impossible,” Cas got out but Dean shook his head.

“They lied or they forgot about me, how I can do anything,” he said firmly and then he reached his arms in. “Let’s get you two out.” 

Cas stayed where he was, he didn’t know how to move his legs anymore, he realized. Jack turned into him. 

“He’s the fisherman, isn’t he dad?” Jack asked quietly. Cas nodded, dazed. “I told you so. You didn’t believe me.” 

“What’s he talking about?” Dean asked.

“Get him out, help him out,” Cas told him instead. Dean nodded and put his hands on Jack’s forearms, lifting him from the box. Jack went willingly with him, trusting, Cas noticed, instinctively. When he was clearly placed gently on the deck, Dean reached in for Cas as well. Cas found himself wrapping his arms around Dean’s neck as he pulled him out, desperate to feel that he was real and solid and not some terrible, terrible joke. He felt Dean’s sweat between his fingers and expected that Dean felt Cas’s own tears, uncontrollable and quiet, drenching his shirt.

“I’ve got you,” he murmured and placed Cas on the deck beside Jack, who was sitting there, still in shock. Everything felt like a sensory overload and Cas was only dimly aware of the other people there, flashes of red and blonde hair, Sam’s towering shadow, the familiar stench of an even more familiar demon, and two people he didn’t know, were all he could make out. He took Jack in his arms again, wrapping them around the boy’s back and tipping them both up slightly towards the sky. 

“Look, Jack, it’s real, look,” he said. “I should have believed you,” he told him and pressed a kiss into his hair. They were both shaking, he realized and clearly so did Dean as he was behind them in a second, pressing a light, well known garment around them and then staying there, his own arms on them both. 

“You’re both safe, we did it. We did it, I promised you and we did it. I can keep promises, you know that,” Dean was saying, strange hysterical, distant nonsense. Oh, god had he missed him. He had missed his smell and touch, his warmth and the sound of his voice and the feel of his chest and the scratchiness of his flannels, and he thought if he had a say in the matter he would die right then and there or live in it forever. The world had been so dark, so empty, so awful, he had failed in every way possible, and suddenly it had opened itself up again. And all because of Dean Winchester, all because finally he had put his trust in the right man.

“I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you,” Cas found himself chanting until the words had blurred together and become nonsensical, saying it to Jack or Dean or the sky, he didn’t know exactly who. But it was all he seemed to have the breath to say. 

* * *

When they made it back to the cabin, most of what Jack and Cas did was stay in bed. Dean had made some jokes about them having done enough of that but no one had laughed. All Cas had wanted to do was lie in his bed with Jack beside him, letting the light stream in each day and be somewhere between revelling in their freedom and recovering from their ordeal. Sam had protested that they should head back to the bunker, not stay at the cabin where the angels could find them, but Dean had shut that down quite immediately.

“They get whatever they want forever,” he had said firmly. “If this place makes them happy, then let’s do it. And besides if the angels wanna show up, good. I can’t wait to take a bite out of ‘em.”

So they had set up camp in the old house, put back up the wardings, and hoped it would last. After a week though, his mother and the Banes drove back up to Canada and he was left with Sam, Rowena, and Crowley to watch after the recuperating father and son. They all took shifts and got the pair whatever they needed, which was very little besides space and quiet as they struggled to readjust to this new reality. Months in darkness, in nothingness, he couldn’t imagine. At least hell had been something and even that, well that had been no picnic to get over. He still hadn’t gotten over it, he knew, if he thought about it too hard.

Sometimes he would joke about it though, how Cas was getting all this time to languish when he and Sammy had been through similar things and hopped right back in the game. The jokes were harmless, but meant to hurt. Somehow both of those things were true. Crowley kept joking about this being Cas’s “lying in” period and didn’t stop no matter how many times Dean threatened him. 

He wasn’t seeing much of Cas, he was afraid to. Since the frantic and public “I love yous” on the deck of the ship and how he was both so frightened and so grateful, Dean could barely look at him. Rowena was doing most of the tending, the motherly bone in her body that had been forgotten for Crowley seemed to come out with regards to Cas and Jack. It was her job, he told himself over and over, it was better this way.

Seeing Cas, with his big adoring blue eyes was one thing, but Jack looked at him like he was a superhero and he didn’t know whether to hate or love the kid for it. What was Jack to him anyway? Something between a godson, a stepson, and just a run of the mill son. The first was palatable, the second frightening, and the last enough to make him want to run for the hills. He’d already failed the kid harder than either Cas or Jack could understand. He’d abandoned them, left them to a fate worse than death, he’d been late, ages too late, he hadn’t been able to tell his own mother even a fraction of the truth, and he felt nothing but shame when he even so much as thought about either of them. To share a room was like burning alive.

As the weeks went by, Cas and Jack began to get stronger and more capable of venturing out on their own. Jack, he would see running around in the yard, and he was a strange sight to Dean: a little boy’s gestures in a young man’s body. It was strangely endearing and he always felt a tug in his chest to go out and ask him what he was playing at. But he never had the nerve.

Cas himself was more content to sit on the porch and stare out, wrapped in a blanket or his trenchcoat, sipping tea and looking like he was relearning how to breathe or see or live. Dean was silent when he’d pass him there. Until, one day, Cas plucked his sleeve as he went by. He looked up at him as Dean stared down in shock.

“Why do you always run off?” Cas asked him. “Why won’t you speak to me?”

“Cas… “ Dean began but Cas shook his head.

“You’ll save me but you won’t look at me,” Cas said.

“You looking for an explanation?” Dean asked.

“No,” Cas replied. “I guess I know why. I just want you to stop.”

Dean sighed and sat beside him.

“So, you’re mad at me?” Dean asked him with a slight smile, Cas raised his eyebrows. “I saved you and all.”

“Do you expect me to kiss your foot with gratitude?” He drawled in response.

“Seemed like that’s what you wanted from me way back when the roles were reversed,” Dean joked. Cas’s mouth tensed.

“You’ve now done more for me than I did for you back then,” Cas noted and Dean furrowed his brow in confusion. “I only saved your life. You also saved his.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve saved Sam a hell of a lot of times,” Dean said, brushing it off. Cas put his fingers on Dean’s arm and pressed down slightly, Dean looked back at him.

“I’m never going to be able to repay you,” Cas said softly. “Not ever, not in a million years. I already owe you so much- and there’s been so many second chances -but this, I’d given up hope of us ever being rescued. You don’t know what this means.”

Dean turned away, scoffing. He could never handle Cas’s worship of him, certainly not then, his hand still on his arm, such a gentle reminder of the angel’s affection. It all got too dangerous.

“Cas, after all the shit you’ve done for me, I’d consider us about even,” Dean told him. “And if you’re so grateful then that still leaves my question: why are you mad at me?”

“Maybe, I’m just still selfish,” Cas said. Then he seemed to think for a moment, or gather courage. “You prayed to me so much, back then.”

“Cas…” 

“Really beautiful things, Dean. The types of things I’d only ever dreamed of you telling me-”

“I think you’re making a big deal out of nothing-”

“And maybe that made me inclined to hope, I don’t know. Maybe that was stupid,” Cas trailed off a little. Dean stood up, uncomfortable, out of control, wanting to get as far away from this sort of conversation as possible. “You say all those things, imply all these promises, and now you won’t go near me. Me or him.”

“I don’t wanna impede your recovery,” Dean huffed. Cas stood up himself and met his eyes.

“Ignore me, fine, but at least spend some time with him. He’s beginning to worry you hate him,” Cas told him and then headed inside. Dean watched him wander into the house with an ache in his chest.

* * *

He was watching Jack play in the backyard, a few feet away, digging around the worms with a stick, keeping himself occupied in the way only children can. He hadn’t spoken to him much but had taken to this as a sort of middleground, sitting a few feet away and just watching Jack at whatever he was doing, intaking the little commentary or stories he gave as he did it. He looked at Jack curiously for a second, it was scary just how alike he and Cas were. He couldn’t picture Cas as a child like this but he was beginning to assume it must have existed somehow.

“Jack, why did you call me that, what you did on the boat?” Dean asked him suddenly, and Jack stopped what he was doing and looked back, head tilting. “A fisherman, I mean.”

Jack’s face relaxed and he grinned.

“Dad said you loved to fish. And I used to think you’d come and fish us out,” Jack explained.

“You’re only a fisherman if you do it for a living,” Dean told him. “For me it’s just a hobby.”

“I know that,” Jack said. “You’re a hunter. Dad told me that. But I liked the idea of a fisherman and all. And I ended up being right.”

“Right,” Dean said and paused for a moment. “We could go do that sometime.”

“Do what?” Jack asked.

“Go fishing,” Dean told him and savored the way the boy’s eyes lit up. “It’s pretty low effort, we could do it right around here actually. But you know, it’s pretty boring, so you gotta have the patience for it.”

“I think I’m pretty good at being patient,” Jack said and Dean thought _shit, of course he is_. Jack didn’t seem offended though and broke into a smile, a twinkling little _I got you!,_ and Dean smiled back.

“Of course you are,” he said. “Well, one of these days we should get it done, if it’s alright by your dad.”

“I’d really like that,” Jack replied. “It sounds awesome.” And he flashed Dean one more bright smile before returning to his digging.

* * *

Cas was waiting on the porch when Dean and Jack came back from their fishing trip. He found himself on the porch all the time lately and loved it best of the whole house. It was the perfect inbetween of not constricting or suffocating as being inside sometimes was but not too far from the safety the house and the warding provided. He was in a curious state after being rescued and he knew it, not so different from when he had been recovering from the attack dog spell and felt unable to leave the bunker. But this time there was an added fear of confinement, a need to always see the sky and be reminded of his freedom. He was glad he didn’t sleep, every time Jack closed his eyes he knew he was back there.

He didn’t think he was ever going to be the same again. Jack wouldn’t either probably, he hadn’t even spoken a word to anyone who wasn’t Cas or Dean, didn’t seem able to trust anyone else. Dean hadn’t realized it yet, Cas noted, he thought Jack was like this with everyone. But Cas saw it quite clearly for what it was, he’d latched onto Dean as his rescuer, not understanding that Rowena, Sam, and Max had cast the spell, Crowley had chartered the boat, and Alicia and Mary had tortured the angels for how to break the warding on the box. Cas couldn’t blame him though, he felt the same way, on some irrational level. And a part of him was glad that Jack had become this wary of the world, he liked to know that if he were ever threatened again the boy would just fly away.

Cas was pretty sure, though, due to the resilience of youth, that Jack would slowly get better and adjust. With any luck he’d only have the vaguest of memories of this time when he grew up. Cas himself was older, set in his ways, and everything about him had been feeling fragile for ages. It wasn’t something that he had spoken to Dean about, but he knew he wasn’t hunting again. He didn’t want to and also didn’t think he could. He was tired, just exhausted right down to his bones. He knew he wasn’t going back to the bunker either. Safest place in the world, sure, but they couldn’t live underground like that. If he couldn’t see natural light all the time he was sure he’d lose it. Of course, they couldn’t stay in Washington indefinitely, not knowing the angels knew their location, but he’d find somewhere else, somewhere safe and hidden away. Everything in him told him to take Jack and run, as far and as fast as he could and let the world forget them. The only thing keeping him was the one man who ever kept him anywhere.

“Dad we caught one and it was pretty big but then Dean made me throw it back!” Jack shouted, running up towards him, a wide, bright smile on his face. He made it up to the porch where Cas was sitting and Cas caught his hand in his, giving it a squeeze. 

“Too bad you didn’t save it. We could have it for dinner,” Cas said, some lame attempt at a joke. 

“What is for dinner?” Jack asked. His appetite had been ravenous ever since getting out, the year of not eating had certainly taken its toll. Cas laughed.

“I don’t know, that’s more Dean’s domain,” Cas replied and looked at the man standing a pace away. Dean’s face had none of the lightness to Jack’s and in fact there was something strange and hard behind his eyes that confused him. Dean came up onto the porch.

“I’ll get to it in a few, you go on in, kid,” Dean told him. “I got a few things to discuss with your dad.” Jack gave a confused look down at Cas but then shrugged and went into the house. When he heard the door slam, Dean walked up towards Cas. Cas stared at him, the setting sun was framing the back of his head with a warm golden light that hurt Cas’s eyes. He was his second favorite sight in the whole world. “I had a nice talk with your boy.”

“Thanks for taking him,” Cas said and Dean nodded, though he could see something pained in the way his mouth was set.

“Yeah, it was a good time. He’s a good kid,” Dean responded. “He told me something interesting though, something you maybe neglected to mention.”

“What?” Cas asked but he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew. He’d never directly told Jack to keep it from Dean, but he hadn’t wanted to have this conversation.

“Well, this whole time we were made to understand that the angels built that box to hold you both,” Dean began. “But Jack told it different. He said they only came for him.”

Cas swallowed, but kept Dean’s gaze.

“I didn’t have a choice, Dean,” he told him and Dean shook his head and Cas wondered if he was close to tears, there was an unfamiliar glisten to his eyes.

“You could’ve called me, we could’ve figured it out together, did you- what? You didn’t trust me? Didn’t think I would help you? I would always- we would have always helped you if you needed it, you know that,” Dean said, quickly entering the territory of ranting. “I don’t understand why you would go and do something that stupid.”

“I thought it was my style,” Cas replied plainly.

“Don’t be cute,” Dean barked and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s not funny- it’s not- how could you go and do that?”

“Dean, it wasn’t that I didn’t trust you,” Cas said. “It had nothing to do with you at all.”

“Right, right, you know this is the exact type of brainless, masochistic crap you always go and pull-”

“Dean!” Cas found himself yelling and his friend turned to him with a startled look in his eye. It was probably the loudest Cas had spoken since he’d rescued him. He took a breath. “He’s my son. I couldn’t leave him. He was so scared- I couldn’t… if there was any chance, any at all that we wouldn’t be able to get him out, if he might really be stuck there forever…” Cas trailed off, it was his greatest fear: Jack alone in there, the only worse thing that could have happened. It hurt to even think about. “I had to do it. I’m sorry, but I’d do it again too.”

“If we hadn’t found you…” Dean began.

“But you did,” Cas said calmly, Dean shook his head.

“You didn’t believe we would,” Dean told him. It was stated plainly, like a fact, though there was a shake in his voice. “That’s another thing the kid told me, that you had no hope the whole time.”

“It made it easier to bear,” Cas told him in a quiet voice. He hated that everything he was saying only hurt Dean more. “You know you did the same thing for Sam, right?”

“Yeah well, that was dumb too and besides,” Dean paused for a moment, clearly struggling to find the words. “I didn’t have you back then. If you’d been around, I’d have trusted you to save him. I don’t know why you don’t trust me the same, I don’t-”

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas said, trying to stay gentle. He didn’t know what more to say, there was no denying the reality of that fact. He hadn’t kept faith. And the worst part was, he knew before Jack was born that he would have, he’d have laid in that box for ages believing that every day would be the one that Dean would burst in and save him. He would not have given up until the end of the universe. But it was different with Jack, it just was. Carefully, Cas reached out for Dean’s hand, wanting to do something to comfort him. He caught him around the wrist but Dean's hand remained still.

“Jesus Christ, Cas,” Dean said under his breath and then sank slowly to his knees. He landed in front of Cas, his hand in Cas’s lap, still held in his own.

“I am sorry,” Cas repeated. Dean shook his head, turned away.

“I hate you,” Dean whispered. “Oh God, I hate you, Cas.”

Cas looked at him. The last time this man had been on his knees before him, looking this defeated, this helpless, it had been in the crypt. And yet again, Cas was the one inflicting the pain upon him. 

“I know,” Cas replied in a soft voice.

Dean was silent after that. He buried his head in their linked hands, in the folds of Cas’s blanket, in the warmth of his lap. Cas watched him with a strange detachment for a moment before putting his free hand in Dean’s hair, stroking it gently. He hadn’t known how to do these things before, little shows of affection. He couldn’t remember anyone ever doing it to him as a child, had never understood such a thing before meeting Dean. He had learned from him, by watching him and Sam and Bobby, and then from doing, from receiving desperate hugs and face strokes and two tragic nights together. And he had learned even more with Jack, when love had come so easily and his stoic front had melted away. It had been all he was able to give him during their year in the box. Cas was glad to finally, finally, be able to pay it forward, and show Dean all he had learned, to give him a little comfort.

“You don’t know how much I tore myself apart this past year,” Dean said.

“I heard your prayers-” Cas began, but Dean cut him off.

“You don’t know- that was only the half of- that you were somewhere, and I couldn’t reach you- and that house, and finding out what they’d done to you…” Dean stopped himself as if struggling to breathe. “And just- the idea of you and Jack- and that he’d grown and I’d missed- and that you didn’t trust me with him-”

“Dean, it wasn’t lack of trust. I didn’t want to burden you,” he admitted. Dean shook his head yet again and Cas could feel tears landing onto his hand.

“You would never be a burden,” Dean swore.

“I know that now. Dean, if I could do it all over, I would,” Cas said. “I’d have let you in. He loved you, right away, you know that?”

“Let’s do it over now then,” Dean said quietly, so quietly Cas was almost sure he missed him. Nothing in this conversation had shocked him but that sent him spinning. He had never dreamed of Dean promising him something like that.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” He asked and Dean looked up and met his eyes.

“Yes. I want to be there, for you and for the kid. I’ve never wanted anything more,” Dean told him. Cas couldn’t let himself believe it, that this would be happening.

“Dean, I can’t go back to the bunker. I can’t hunt. I don’t want that anymore. You don’t understand-” Cas was tripping over his words, trying to make Dean see reason, convince him that he didn’t want this, couldn’t want this. 

“I don’t care about any of that,” Dean said firmly.

“Yes you do, you don’t think you do, but you do. You tried it before, with Lisa,” Cas said, feeling frantic and wild and angry at Dean for even making him imagine this. “And that was a disaster, a total disaster and this would be worse because we’d never be safe and we’d need you so much, so much more than you could ever need us and I- I’ll be no help. Not even a little. At least she was a whole person.”

“I don’t care,” Dean repeated. “I don’t care about any of that Cas.”

“That isn’t true,” Cas told him but Dean squeezed his hand tightly, cutting him off, causing him to feel unable to breathe.

“I’m so sorry I avoided you. I’m sorry I was scared,” Dean said, looking down at their hands once again. “It was all so much.”

“I’m not angry,” Cas said. “But what if you get scared again? What if you need to pull away? I don’t want you to feel burdened, to feel like you failed-”

“I won’t do that.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I do,” Dean nearly spat the words out. Then the lines in Dean’s forehead softened and Cas felt such a strange calm wash over him, as if his old blind faith in this man was returning. “I look at Jack, all day today, the kid never shut up and I- I love him, Cas. I love him, I do, really, as if he was my own. He’s so perfect. I was thinking it all day, I love him and I love-”

Dean stopped himself. It was alright though, Cas thought, it was more than enough. Dean kissed the center of Cas’s palm with rough lips, a long lingering touch somewhere between a vow and a prayer. Cas bent his head over Dean’s and they stayed there until Dean had to get up and make dinner. There was nothing more to say. 

* * *

Things moved quickly from then on. Dean had tried explaining his choice to Sam, who had been shocked, not unkind, but not understanding. 

“You’re leaving me alone?” He had asked him and Dean hadn’t been able to say that yes, because Sam didn’t need him like he used to. He wanted to tell his brother to go off and do what he’d always wanted, to stick around with Rowena and figure out that witch stuff, or even just go back to college. He didn’t say any of that, just laughed it off and tossed his brother the keys to the Impala as some jokey consolation prize, and promised to keep in touch.

(It seemed to have somehow been communicated though, as Rowena had climbed into the passenger seat when Sam had finally driven the Impala off the property. There was a small smile on her red lips, and a lingering hand on his knee.)

Crowley had taken the news rather gracefully, at the very least he had been expecting it, though he had raised his eyebrows when it was delivered. 

“You know how it went the last time you went domestic, right?” He had said, clearly also referencing Lisa, Dean had nodded.

“It’ll be different this time,” Dean had replied. 

“Yes, I suppose it will. He’s certainly not her,” Crowley had remarked. “The altar boy and his spawn seem to actually make you rather happy. Miracle of miracles.”

Dean had smiled for a moment, a private smile that he’d have suppressed if Sam was in the room.

“Thank you,” he had told Crowley, and realized he’d probably never said it before. Crowley had rolled his eyes.

“You’re far from welcome,” he had replied and disappeared as per usual. Dean had found himself laughing once he was gone.

When all the business was wrapped up, they packed up the house into the back of Cas’s truck and drove East. Donna had a friend who had a friend who had a place in Northern Minnesota they were looking to sell for cheap. It was large and away from things, almost like a farmhouse, and the first thing they did when they arrived was ward it to shit. The second thing they did was let Jack have first pick of the bedrooms. The third thing was to drive into town to buy him a cat.

Dean worked as a mechanic, which was good and hard work that kept his mind off of things and it was good to fix rather than break for the first time in a while, part time only, though. Most of his time was spent at home, where Cas was homeschooling Jack and there was work to be done: yard work to do, a leaky roof to fix, walls to repaint, and dinner to get on the table as Cas couldn’t cook for shit. He felt his favorite moments of the day were passing through the porch or the living room or the kitchen table where Cas was sitting with Jack bent over a textbook and pressing kisses into each of their heads. For the house itself, he had really no complaints, he enjoyed working on it, Cas himself kept things pretty clean and tidy, and the only problem was how drafty it got as if it wasn’t raining or too windy Jack and and Cas insisted on keeping the windows open. He wouldn’t complain about that.

For Cas’s part, his favorite moment of the day was when he washed the dishes in the morning, because out of the window above the sink he could watch Jack talking to Dean and wishing him a good day at work through the window of the truck right before he drove off. This came only second to the moment every night when Dean wound an arm around his waist after climbing into bed. He still didn’t sleep due to his grace, though it got weaker every day, but would often join Dean in his dreams instead (he’d been given blanket permission) erasing the nightmares as best as he could. 

Sometimes he would sit on the porch for what felt like hours, just savoring the feeling of the sun on his face and the sounds of the birds and the blowing of the wind through the fields. He did this especially on hard days, when the weight of it all crashed back down on his shoulders. On one of those days, when Jack was curled up on the living room sofa reading to the cat, and they had some time to themselves, Dean crept quietly onto the porch and sat down next to him.

“Nice sky today,” Dean remarked and Cas nodded.

“One of the best in days,” he replied. Dean chuckled.

“You’ve really become all about the simple joys, haven’t you Cas?” Dean said and Cas didn’t really get the joke but nodded anyway.

“They’re worth appreciating,” he told him simply.

“Yeah,” Dean admitted, and put an arm around his shoulder. “I guess you’re right.”

They sat quietly together for a while, Cas’s head leaning against Dean’s chest, positioned just under his chin. 

“Do you believe me now Cas?” Dean asked him, barely a whisper in his ear. “That I’m not going anywhere? That I won’t get scared? Do you trust me?”

Cas considered. He considered the house and the truck and the warding. He considered how Dean smelled of grease from working in the shop earlier that day and how he had ruffled Jack’s hair that morning over breakfast. He considered how he was there when the sun rose and set and how Dean held him when he felt like he was crazy or shattered. He remembered how the day before, at the supermarket, he had told the cashier that the sugary cereal was for their son. 

Then he smiled, very small and crooked, and looked at Dean. Slowly, he kissed him on the lips, just a light touch, and wondered if he was sealing the vow they had made on the porch back in Washington with the kiss to his palm. He broke away then, their faces still close.

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> i just really think they deserved to be happy and together and break cycles of abuse and to raise their kid idk


End file.
